- On the right we have our finished version,and on the left our work in progress.It's now time to create the letters.I'll come to the work in progress,and choose consolidate all,command or control zero, and thenI am going to come to the layers panel and hide the grids,make sure I'm targeting the letters layer.I'll start with the rectangle tool and draw a square.Once again I'm going to do this numerically,I'm going to draw a square at 100 points.

I want that square to have a red fill, and no stroke.Let's tear off the shape tools,because next I want an ellipse at the same size,but this is going to have a blue fill,and next I want a triangle.Now I can't specify this numerically in the same waybecause if I make the radius of that 100you can see that that's much larger.

Anyway, we have the triangle,so I'm now going to come to the transform panelmaking sure that constrain width and proportionsis unchecked, I am going to makethe width and height 100 points.So basically we're beginning with an equilateral trianglewhich is not going to have the same width and height,but then we are distorting that.So now with those three shapes,maybe we want to align their top edges,I can then come to the transparency paneland we will change their transparency to 80%.

Now let's get in larger, and we'll start with the letter B.Selecting the red square, I'll drag down a copy of that.I'll turn on my rulers, command or control R,and drag down guides to mark its top and bottom.I'm going to half its width,then pull down a copy of the blue circle.

I will align the center point of the circleto the right edge of the rectangle.I'm going to use my scale tool,let's zoom in so we can see what we're doing.Option or alt, click on the bottom anchor pointand scale that to 66%.I will then duplicate that, option or alt,dragging away from it, select both of those circles.We're going to need these later on for the S,so I will just drag them to the right,but then I'll come back and select themand send them to the back.

So there is our B.I know it's out of sequence, butsince we have these shapes already here,we may as well now do the S.Get into a large view size for thisbecause we need to be very accurate, very precise.With the line segment tool, I'm going to drawa line segment from the anchor pointto the edge of the circle, and I'll do the samewhere the large circle intersects with the lower circle.

Now swipe over those elements,come to the shape builder tool,and I said we needed to be accurate,and I have not been accurate enough.So I'm going to switch to my outline view,because these things need to line up exactlyotherwise they're just not going to work.And that looks like it's lining up to meso I'm not quite sure what the problem is.Let's just carry that out beyond the edge.

Ok, let's have them selected, we'll go back to previewback to our shape builder, okay, now it's working.So I'm going to hold down option or alt,and click on that point and do the same on that point.And there is our S, I'll just make surethat those elements are grouped together,which is something I forgot to do here,so I'm going to now do that, select those elementsand group those together.The A is easy, the A is nothing morethan the yellow triangle, so we can skip that.

We now need a U, and this is once againgoing to begin with a red rectangle.I want to make it one third of it's current width.On the transform panel, I'll insert my cursorafter the width, and type /3.I'm now going to duplicate that,option, shift, drag away from it,and repeat that transformation, command D.

I'll select this interior portionwhich is just used to space outthe other two and delete that.Going to use my blue circle,and drag down a copy of that.Let's zoom in, I'll switch to my scissors tool.I want to break this circle in half,so I'm clicking on those twoanchor points with my scissors tool.I can now delete that top portion,swipe over these three shapes,and once again, with the shape builder,holding down option or alt,deleting the portions we don't need,and then command or control G,to make sure that what remains is grouped.

The only letter we need still to do is the H.This is once again going to beginwith a red rectangle, and once againwe are going to divide that by three,same as we did for the U, option, shift,drag away from it, repeat the transformation.This time, select the piece in the middle,and on the rotate tool, rotate that through 90 degrees.

And then swipe over those with the selection tooland group them together.We now have all the letters we need.In the next movie we'll arrange themand space them.

Resume Transcript Auto-Scroll

Author

Released

10/23/2014

Welcome to another installment of Type Project. In this short course, designer Nigel French provides a historical background on Bauhaus—the influential German art school that operated from 1919-1933—and then takes you through a step-by-step process to create a new design inspired by the original style, with Adobe Illustrator. The essence of this technique is distilled in the letterforms you'll create, based on Bauhaus leader Wassily Kandinsky's signature primary-colored shapes.